When Trophy Fishing Tackle owner John Nappo, Jr. began the arduous task of cleaning up what Super Storm Sandy left of his Babylon, NY, store, he figured little, if any, merchandise would have survived intact.

And for the most part, he was right. Item after item pulled out of the remaining muck was ruined. Imagine his surprise then, when he opened package after package of waterlogged VMC hooks to find them still shiny and sharp.

“The VMC hooks that got submerged survived intact with no corrosion,” he said. “While the packaging got damaged, the products inside were perfect. Colored treble hooks had no corrosion on them at all. VMC Octopus hooks in bright finish had no damage and, in fact, look so perfect that we cleaned the packaging and put them back on the shelf for re-sale.”

Because competing products “did not fair so well,” Nappo said, he lost a significant amount of his fishing-hook inventory. “The most common issue were the products in the packages being so badly rusted and corroded, it became impossible to re-sell them.” He had to discard many Mustad, Owner and Gamakatsu hooks, due to excessive corrosion.

“No other hook that we had on the shelf survived like the VMC hook,” Nappo said. “As far as I am concerned, VMC is making the finest fishing hooks available today.”

Trophy Fishing Tackle’s building was so severely damaged in Super Storm Sandy, Nappo was forced to relocate. He took his inventory of Super Storm-resistant VMC hooks with him.

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